Oracle Application Server Portal Developer Kit (PDK)
Installing the PDK-URL Services External Application Sample Portlets

Overview

Welcome to PDK-URL Services.  Now that you have successfully installed the PDK-Java Framework and samples, you may want to create URL-based portlets.

Note: PDK-URL Services enables you to expose content from external websites as portlets using a manual, XML file-based approach. However, if you are targeting your provider to be registered with OracleAS Portal 9.0.2 or later, the recommended approach to perform the same task is to use the Web Clipping Portlet. To find out about using Web Clipping or how to migrate your URL-based portlet to Web Clipping, go to the OmniPortlet and Web Clipping area of Portal Center.

This article describes how to install and configure the PDK-URL Services NLS sample.  There are three portlets in the PDK-URL Services NLS sample:

• Asahi
• Excite Japan
• Zaobao

The PDK-URL services NLS sample provider is pre-configured within jpdk.ear, with a service ID of urn:urlnls.

Minimum Requirements

1. OracleAS Portal 3.0.8.9.8 or later
2. PDK-Java 9.0.2.

Assumptions

1. You have already successfully installed the PDK-Java Framework and samples by following the Installing the PDK-Java Framework and Samples article. These samples use the PDK-Java Framework.
2. You have installed Portal on a database that is using a character set compatible with the language of your portlet.  For example, if your portlet has multibyte characters then the Portal database must be using a character set compatible with this (i.e., UTF-8).

Configuring and Testing the Provider

The PDK-URL Services NLS sample provider has been pre-configured within the jpdk.ear.  However, you may need to change the provider.xml file to specify the proxy server you use.  Open the provider.xml file for the sample (it should be located in the WEB-INF/providers/urlnls directory) and provide appropriate replacement values for the following tags:

<proxyInfo class="oracle.portal.provider.v2.ProxyInformation">
    <httpProxyHost>www-proxy.us.oracle.com</httpProxyHost>
    <httpProxyPort>80</httpProxyPort>
</proxyInfo>
      

Next, you can test that the NLS sample is properly configured with OC4J.

1. Execute the NLS sample provider servlet from OC4J.

   For example:  http://myserver.mydomain.com:port/jpdk/providers/urlnls

2. Review the content of the test page displayed. If you did not receive the test page, verify that you can execute standard servlets using Oracle Application Server.

Registering Your Provider

You must now register the NLS portlet provider with OracleAS Portal.

1. On the Build tab of the Portal Design-Time Pages root page, click on Register a Portlet Provider within the portlet called Provider.
2. Enter Provider information for the Sample.
1. Name: URL_NLS_sample
2. Display Name: PDK-URL Services NLS sample
3. Timeout: 300
4. Timeout Message: PDK-URL Services NLS sample Timed Out
5. Implementation Style: Web
6. URL: http://myhost.com:8888/jpdk/providers (if you're using OracleAS Portal 3.0.9, append the service id, urlnls, to the URL)
7. Service Id: urn:urlnls
8. Login Frequency: Never
3. Click Finish.

Adding Your Portlet to a Page

1. To view the portlet in the appropriate language, select the following in IE 5.0 or above.

   View -> Encoding -> Japanese(EUC) for the Japanese portlet.

2. To view the portlets correctly, you must also have a suitable font installed in your browser

• If you are using IE 5.0 (or later), then IE will automatically install the necessary fonts
• If you are using an older version of IE or a Netscape browser then you must manually download and install suitable fonts

You have now successfully installed and setup the PDK-URL Services NLS sample portlets.